Allie in Spain (and Ireland): 36 Hours in Cinque Terre, Italy

Well I guess it was actually more like 48 hours, but let me assure you I traveled very far for those 48 hours. Also, let me assure you, it was well worth it. When Katie found out that she was going to be in Milan for work this spring, we knew that we had to work out some kind of trip. After our adventure in Paris last year, how could we resist the opportunity for another European, sister getaway? So, after examining our options, we decided on the fabulously rugged and beautiful coastal region known as Cinque Terre (5 lands). This area is made up of 5 towns, Monterosso al Mar, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manorola and Riomaggiore in the Ligueria region of Italy on the Italian Riviera. It's famous for its natural beauty, gorgeous Mediterranean weather, and delicious food (it is the birthplace of pesto). Conveniently, there was a NYT article which we were able to model our trip after, and it was quite helpful:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/travel/05hours.html

Katie was already in Milan, so she only had a 3 hour train ride - my journey was much more taxing. I flew RyanAir for only 45 euros (for those of you not familiar, it's a horribly abysmal budget airline) and my flight left Madrid at 6:00 am. Since this was a Saturday morning flight, I made the excellent decision of just not sleeping since I eat out on Fridays and wasn't going to be home until after midnight anyway. Yay for going 36 hours without sleep. So after eating dinner and packing, I headed to the airport around 4 am. This is only the beginning of the journey. The catch to the 45 euros flight was that RyanAir doesn't actually fly to Milan Malapensa airport, it flies to Bergamo, a city about an hour outside of Milan. So I booked a 15 euro coach (still making the journey cheaper than it would've been on any other airline) and arrived in Milan's Central Station around 9:30 am. Katie showed up about an hour later, in typical Katie fashion, and I, in typical Allie fashion, had all of our tickets printed out and was ready to go. We grabbed some coffee and bought a few chocolates for the road and headed to our train!

Now, there's a small back story on the trains. I had quite the nightmare trying to book our train tickets. The website is just completely unnavigable and so confusing. I ended up just leaving it in Italian because I could make more sense of that than the awful English translations. After fighting with it for well over an hour, I finally got our trains booked into Riomaggiore, the town which we chose to stay in, but we had to change trains twice on the way there. I really enjoyed taking the train though, and the views through the countryside were amazing. We finally arrived at our hotel around 3 on Saturday. The hotel was adorable and had a little balcony overlooking the main street. After 11 hours in transit I was exhausted, but since we had limited time there, we had to get on the move immediately! We pretty much followed the NYT article word for word, with a few exceptions (at first we couldn't figure out the introductory hike that he suggested, so we saved that for the last day in place of paying 16 euros to sit in a pretty chair - no thank you).

Our first step was to explore the town a little and get a feel for things. We grabbed some crepes for a quick lunch and then headed up to the famous Lover's Walk, which connects Riomaggiore and the next village, Manarola. This path actually extends through all the 5 villages and is a fairly rigorous 5 hour hike, but the part which we did was tourist friendly and only took about half an hour. The views it boasts of the ocean are unbeatable. The weather was very nice - in the mid 60s and sunny. We then explored Manarola a little bit, which was remarkably similar to Riomaggiore. All the towns are somewhat alike and have a very antiquated feeling to them. They are not accessible by car and they're just so small and adorable that you feel like you've been transported back 200 years. After walking by a million delicious looking little stores filled with focaccia bread and pesto, we decided to stop for a while and have some wine to kill time before dinner (this trip was largely centered around eating). We shared a bottle of the unique Cinque Terre wine made with a blend of sweet white grapes (clearly, I am a wine expert now). We watched the sunset over the ocean and had really good catch-up sesh, since seeing each other at the wedding didn't really count because it was go-go-go wedding stuff the entire time!

When it was finally an acceptable time to eat dinner, we headed to the NYT restaurant suggestion Trattorio dal Billy. This restaurant was nestled up in the hills and had an amazing view! After convincing the waiters that we would eat quickly and be out of the way in time for the 9:00 reservation, they seated us. Here's where the fun begins. We started off with a Caprese salad and a new bottle of wine, this time red (don't worry, I'm still weirded out by the fact that I can legally order a drink too). Then we decided to just order a couple things and split them - we settled on the spaghetti with pesto and stuffed mussels. Both of these dishes were AMAZING. The pesto in Cinque Terre is to die for, as Ligueria is in fact the home of Pesto. The stuffed mussels were, however, my favorite food of the entire trip. At the time, I didn't even really know what I was eating, I just knew it was delicious. They're probably something similar to this or this, but in a really yummy tomato sauce. I'm determined to try and make them someday. So good. At this point, we were stuffed and our bill was rapidly growing - but who can say no to dessert (the amount of wine we had consumed by this point probably wasn't helping us make rational decisions, either)? I managed to talk Katie into the panna cotta, even though it doesn't explicitly have chocolate. However, by a twist of fate, it had a nice chocolate drizzle on it. Everybody wins! It was phenomenal. Then our waiter served us the traditional after dinner servings of limoncino, an Italian liqueur, along with glasses of some disgusting alcoholic concoction, which our water persistently insisted was Coca Cola Lite. Good one, garcon. We later discovered that it was probably either Grappa or Sciacchetra. Whatever it was, I don't reccomend it. Other than that, the meal was absolutely amazing. We almost wanted to go back there the 2nd night just because it was so delicious. Although we spent a lot of money on that meal, we definitely got some bang for our buck. After dinner, I was utterly exhausted, and we were both sufficiently wined- out, so we headed back to the room early and crashed (not like there's much nightlife in Cinque Terre anyway).

We woke up the next morning around 9 and made the observation of how nice it was that cars can't access the village so you only hear happy sounds in the morning. We were excited to head out for our first and only full day in the area! We stopped at the little restaurant outside our hotel for breakfast and had a delicious Cinque Terre omelet - pesto, basil and Parmesan cheese. Nom nom nom. Then we hopped on the regional train to the middle town, Corniglia. Here, the NYT article describes a path to a secret beach. After disembarking from the train, we avoided climbing the 300+ step staircase into the town, and instead searched for this secret path - it was not easy, and we're not really sure if we were successful. We walked along a coastal wall, which sported some beautiful views, and we walked by some cute little houses until we realized we were lost. We tried back the other direction, and found what it seemed the article was describing - and industrial tunnel with a metal gate - but unfortunately there was absolutely no way through this gate and the tunnel was visibly full of obstructions. Our thought was that maybe they closed it off since all the tourists started trying to come after reading that article - kudos to them. Either way, this trek defintiely wasn't a waste. There was a little staircase going straight down to the water and we sat for a little while on the very rocky beach (which could have been the secret beach - we'll probably never know). I'll take this opportunity to say that Cinque Terre isn't what you probably typically think of as coastal. Although all 5 villages have access to the water for swimming, Monterosso al Mar is the only one that has real beaches. The coast is very rocky and it's more of a hiker's paradise than a beach goer's. Either way, it wasn't very sunny yet and it was too cold to lay out at that point so not finding the secret beach was no big loss. I stuck my feet in and the water was quite cold, so we decided to move on to the next village for lunch.

Vernazza is probably one of the most popular villages in the area. It seemed a lot busier, and it has a little sandy patch of beach that plenty of people were laying out on. The restaurant NYT recommended was a little too pricey for us so we stopped in a little pizza joint and has some pesto pizza. Yum. We walked around the town a little and went into the Church of Santa Margherita d'Antiochia, which was built starting in 1318 (gotta have a little history on all my trips). After this, we climbed up a pretty intense staircase to get a good view of the area, and then, fortunately, we could justify getting some gelato.

After I had procured my delicious gelato cone of dark chocolate, coffee, and stracciatella, tragedy struck. We wanted to find a good place on the rocks to relax for a while since the sun had come out, and as you can probably predict after reading the first 10 words of this sentence, rocks + water + ice cream cone = Allie falling. Yep. I did a total cartoon style slip, and slid on my butt into some mud. So sad. I almost managed to save the cone, but the slippery mud was not allowing it and my perfectly flavor balanced gelato became a casualty of this horrible incident. Perhaps the universe is trying to send me a sign that I should eat less ice cream. Hmm. Anyway, my dress was completely covered in mud and I had secured a cut on my foot that was bleeding (don't worry, the wound was shallow at best). Fortunately, we had optimistically worn our bathing suits that morning! Katie cleaned off my dress in a waterfall as I went down into the frigid water to try and get all the mud off of me. It really couldn't have worked out any better, given the circumstances. Katie even shared the rest of her ice cream cone with me! I'm sure all the other tourists enjoyed observing this comical scene. So, we were pretty much bound to sitting in the sun waiting for my dress to dry until we had to leave at 5:50 to catch the last ferry to Monterosso. We took in a little sun and I think I might have actually gotten some color! By 5:30, my dress was as good as new, and we hopped on the ferry.

The ferry ride was incredibly short, but it was awesome to see a view of the coast from the water. We arrived at Monterosso al Mar at around 6 and could easily tell that it was much more touristy than the other villages. Like I said, it's the only one with real beaches and it has a much more resort-like feel. We wandered around for a while (this vacation involved a lot of wandering), and stopped in a little beach-side restaurant for an appetizer and pre-dinner drink - mixed bruschetta and Orange Campino. We then checked out the NYT restaurant recommendation, which we again found it a little too pricey. It's up on a hill with awesome views so they seemed to jack up prices. Also, it was dark by this point and we were not dressed appropriately to be seated outside, aka FREEZING, so we went back to the main street to find somewhere a little more casual and preferably indoors. There were a million to choose from, so we settled on one with outdoor heat lamps. We had a very similar meal as the night before, this time with stuffed squid, anchovies and mussels. The stuffed mussels were very similar, and the menu described the stuffing as eggs, cheese and a variety of spices. The anchovies and squid were delicious as well. Then we had some gnocchi pesto. Delish. We wanted to keep this meal cheaper, so we stopped there. It was now around 9, and even though the NYT article claimed that there may be some nightlife in Monterosso since it's more populated, we were freezing and decided to head back to our hotel in Riomaggiore. We stopped at another little restaurant there for dessert and had some yummy almond cream pie. We headed to bed early because we wanted to make the most out of our last day.

We woke up around 8, packed all our stuff, and headed out. After becoming more familliar with the area, we decided to try and figure out the first thing the NYT suggested, which was what seemed to be a little walk up through the vineyard above Riomaggiore to some viewpoint that was supposed to be amazing. We decided to stop quickly for breakfast, even though we knew we'd be eating an early lunch before having to catch the train at 2. This was probably the best decision ever, otherwise we actually may have died later. It ended up not being that quick, thanks to the wonders of European customer service, but nourishment was essential, as we would later learn. So after eating, we began climbing up the streets of Riomaggiore in search of the trail head to Santuario della Madonna di Monternero, and we found it, complete with a map showing us where to go. How great. According to the article, it was about a 15 minute uphill trek, but the viewpoint was well worth the climb. Now, Katie and I are both in reasonably good shape and I think we were both anticipating a nice stroll through some vineyards. This is now how it went down. I don't know what this guy's perception of time is, or if he seriously thinks that that was something that normal American can do, but let me tell you, IT WAS NOT EASY. After about 20 minutes of hiking uphill and having some old Italian man have to direct us from making a wrong turn, we weren't sure what we were getting ourselves into. Although the path was gorgeous, it was rugged, confusing, and essentially straight uphill. We were both winded and sweating. We figured it couldn't be too much further though. Wrong. After about 30 minutes, we passed a main road, and realized that maybe this was his starting point, and it would only be another 15 minutes from there. Wrong. Eventually, we became convinced that we were going the wrong way. There wasn't another soul in site, and at one point arrows pointing in the opposite direction began to appear on the path. Oh dear. After an hour, we were both ready to throw in the towel, until another hiker passed us. Around the same time, we caught a glimpse through the trees of the potentially incredibly view and it rejuvenated us. After another 5 minutes, out of nowhere, like a gleaming beacon of hope, the church finally appeared! What we both though would be a nice stroll, turned into a hike in which we climbed 1100 feet in what would've been about 50 minutes had we not stopped in confusion so many times. Not too shabby. And the views were amazing. You could see the entire 11 mile coastline and each of the villages. I'd say it was well worth being covered in my own sweat for the 11 hour journey home I had ahead of me. Nice visual for you there.

Going down was a lot easier, and took us only about a half an hour. By then, we were starving again and went into a little pizza shop for lunch. I had Margharita pizza and a delicious piece of Pesto Focaccia bread. We also, of course, had to have some gelato before leaving Italy. And that's about it. We hopped on the train and headed back to Milan, from where I had to leave immediately to catch my flight from Bergamo. It was sad to say goodbye again, but I'm pretty sure she's coming to visit in Dublin, so it won't be too long until we are reunited and can have another great sister trip! I got back to Madrid around midnight and crashed as soon as I got home.

As you can probably tell, this vacation was another one which was very leisurely. There weren't a lot of "sights" so we were able to relax and take our time, but I still feel like I did a good job covering the area. You really can't beat the natural beauty and delicious cuisine of Cinque Terre. I would go back there in a heart beat. Katie and I both agreed it would be an excellent honeymoon spot. Also, if I were to go back, I'd want to partake in more outdoorsy activities - the hiking possibilities are endless and it would be incredible to sail there (cough cough, Daddy, cough cough). Anyways, if you like delicious Italian food and beautiful coastal views, then you should consider a trip to the 5 lands.

Check out and mine and Katie's albums on facebook for the full photo experience, but here are a few highlights: